Did Feminism Ruin Dating?

Revisiting "Schrödinger’s Rapist" 15 years later and the downstream effects of its warnings

Ozy Brennan recently published an essay about whether or not feminism is, indeed, to blame for the anxiety so many men today feel about asking out women in today’s social climate. Brennan posits that asking people out is just scary for everyone, whether you’re a straight male or a gay woman or anyone in-between:

Or is it perhaps that asking people out is scary and vulnerable and awkward? Is it perhaps that, to ask people out, you have to open up about something you want very much, in a way that isn’t cool and chill and unaffected but embarrassing and earnest and maybe even desperate? Is it perhaps that asking people out is asking someone you yearn for the approval of to pass judgment on something that goes as much to the core of your self-worth as your sexual attractiveness? Is it perhaps that, while everyone is grabbing for the cultural narrative that fits their gender and orientation, ultimately asking people out makes everyone feel like they’re about six inches tall?

I don’t disagree with the premise that asking people out is scary. It is a very vulnerable position to put oneself in, and I say that as a hetero woman who has usually been pretty comfortable being an asker-outer or first-move-maker. Even as the dorkiest kid alive in elementary school, I still regularly made it a point to confess my feelings to my crush, whoever he was, as if it were literally a requirement of having one, and eventually “ask him out.” (Or the 3rd grade equivalent, which, for me and my very first “boyfriend” Troy, was hanging out together at recess and sitting next to each other on the bus for 3 days in a row before I broke up with him because I “realized I wasn't ready for a boyfriend.”)¹

Anyway, Troy was pretty much my first and last successful attempt at having a crush reciprocated until much later in high school, but that didn't stop me from trying, over and over again, rejection after rejection. It sucked, for sure, being a lovestruck, boy-crazy, and utterly unappealing nerd into my teens. I was basically Tina Belcher. It's funny to me now (and a little impressive, tbh) to look back at how I kept at it, though. I don't know why I subjected myself to such hormonal and emotional torture so willingly and enthusiastically for so long. Maybe that's for another essay.

the only difference between us was that my boobs were much smaller and I would occasionally choose to get even worse haircuts

Anyway.

When it comes to dating, it’s just that, well, things really have changed in very specific ways over the past 15 or so years. And I think the dudes complaining about it are mostly right about the reason why.

Phaedra Starling’s Schrödinger’s Rapist [PDF], published in 2009, has gotten more attention recently in the little corner of Substackistan that I tend to inhabit. The other day I restacked a fifteen-year-old post I wrote responding to Starling’s essay from an old blog I imported over here, because rereading it reminded me viscerally of what it was like back then in that old internet-centered, 3rd-wave feminism world, and I believe it's directly related to this phenomenon.

Allow me to explain, from the perspective of a former “feminist blogger” who was never quite fully accepted by the wider feminist blogging community (for reasons that are probably going to become clear soon, if they aren't already).

Starling uses her essay to explain to men that, when they approach women they don't yet know that they are interested in possibly dating, they need to keep many things in mind:

Now, you want to become acquainted with a woman you see in public. The first thing you need to understand is that women are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, a man. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.

“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”

Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police. My activities after dark are curtailed. Unless I am in a densely-occupied, well-lit space, I won’t go out alone. Even then, I prefer to have a friend or two, or my dogs, with me. Do you follow rules like these?

Again, I don’t disagree completely. As a woman, I’ve definitely done some of these things, especially when I lived in the city, like curtailing my solo activities after dark, avoiding walking around certain neighborhoods alone, or generally avoiding being in an environment with men I knew or suspected might be unsafe to be around for whatever reason. But honestly, looking back, I was much more afraid of being robbed than anything else. I still am. But I do think that I am a much easier-looking target as a small woman than an average man might be, so it’s not like gender isn’t still a consideration when I make these choices to avoid certain things.

Some of what Starling declares throughout her essay that is so utterly baffling to me might simply be due to a difference in the way that I tended to date than she seemed to. Before I was married, I usually met guys I dated through work or mutual friends, usually gradually becoming a couple rather than starting off with that vibe or intention right off the bat. It didn't always work out that way,² but it was the ongoing trend of most of my romantic life for boyfriends to start off as friends. It just made more sense to me, and it happened more naturally.

I’m just saying, the fear in this essay is palpable, and she was spreading it not only to other women, but to men, as well. A different kind of fear was transferred to the men, but it was fear, nonetheless. And she was far from the only one. A feminist friend of mine once announced that she expects male dates to pay for her meals because it’s the least they can do to make up for the fact that she’s risking her literal life to go on a date with him. And that's just anecdotal — there are scores of recorded public writings and videos and podcasts and other media documenting this fear that is disproportionate to reality every single day. I'm being lazy about citations here because it's been literally all over social media for a decade and a half and it’s still going strong.

Starling does give some reasonable advice in her essay:

The second important point: you must be aware of what signals you are sending by your appearance and the environment. We are going to be paying close attention to your appearance and behavior and matching those signs to our idea of a threat.

This means that some men should never approach strange women in public. Specifically, if you have truly unusual standards of personal cleanliness, if you are the prophet of your own religion, or if you have tattoos of gang symbols or Technicolor cockroaches all over your face and neck, you are just never going to get a good response approaching a woman cold. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a life of solitude, but I suggest you start with internet dating, where you can put your unusual traits out there and find a woman who will appreciate them.

I had a good chuckle at the prophet bit, and yes, many of these things are true, but “internet dating” is not really proving to be the panacea we thought it had the potential to be when used exclusively, and these sorts of people would probably be better served finding an IRL social circle that includes women who share their own interests and values, who will be able to get to know him personally and make her decision based on that, rather than her first impression of his appearance, which women are usually more likely to want to do, anyway (although really, everyone should bathe regularly, please, for us all) — another way in which The Apps are not working out for many people very well.

Starling seemed to have good intentions here in trying to shine light on some experiences women have that many men may not have understood, but what really happened is that she helped make viral the idea that not only are all women terrified of being raped all the time by every man, but that we should be.

I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me? Do you think I’m overreacting?

One in every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. I bet you don’t think you know any rapists, but consider the sheer number of rapes that must occur. These rapes are not all committed by Phillip Garrido, Brian David Mitchell, or other members of the Brotherhood of Scary Hair and Homemade Religion. While you may assume that none of the men you know are rapists, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: if every rapist commits an average of ten rapes (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then the concentration of rapists in the population is still a little over one in sixty. That means four in my graduating class in high school. One among my coworkers. One in the subway car at rush hour. Eleven who work out at my gym. How do I know that you, the nice guy who wants nothing more than companionship and True Love, are not this rapist?

The interesting thing is that she described how people she knows may be rapists, which tracks with the fact that rapists are usually known to their victim, but the basis of her essay is rooted in the idea that she’s paralyzingly terrified of being raped by strangers.

You want to say Hi to the cute girl on the subway. How will she react? Fortunately, I can tell you with some certainty, because she’s already sending messages to you. Looking out the window, reading a book, working on a computer, arms folded across chest, body away from you = do not disturb. So, y’know, don’t disturb her. Really. Even to say that you like her hair, shoes, or book. A compliment is not always a reason for women to smile and say thank you. You are a threat, remember? You are Schrödinger’s Rapist. Don’t assume that whatever you have to say will win her over with charm or flattery. Believe what she’s signaling, and back off.

If you speak, and she responds in a monosyllabic way without looking at you, she’s saying, “I don’t want to be rude, but please leave me alone.”

Two things:

1. It is annoying to be disturbed, to be sure. Sometimes people just want to be left the hell alone. And yes, responding monosyllabically and making a point to look away from you is usually a good signal that she’s not interested and that you should move on. Please do move on in this case, whether you’re a man or a woman, speaking to a man or a woman! Also, if you are in public and you are safe, if you are the focus of someone will not move on, please do be assertive and tell them to simply leave you alone. I know it’s hard, and I also struggle with always trying not to hurt people’s feelings despite my own, but if you truly don’t want to be spoken to or bothered and someone is nice enough but just not getting the hint, you need to be honest with them instead of continuing to drop hints they’re clearly not picking up on. It is the adult thing to do.

That said, I almost never use public transportation without finding a way to occupy myself while I’m on it — usually by reading something or looking out the window. My arms are usually across my chest or similarly positioned because that’s a perfectly normal way to sit when you’re alone on a subway or bus or airplane, especially if it’s crowded, and sometimes it’s actually kind of cold in there. It’s also kind of boring, especially if you take the same route often. Being occupied doesn't necessarily mean I'm not open to friendly conversation.

My point is that body language is not as easy a thing to assess on public transportation or similar areas as she suggests.

2. “You are a threat, remember? You are Schrödinger’s Rapist.”

Emphasis mine.

This is just not an effective way to communicate with the opposite sex if you want them to empathize with you, nor is living with this kind of constant, omnipresent fear of every man you encounter a healthy way of moving about one’s own life. It just isn’t. It was novel in 2009 and maybe the hyperbolic language, as sincerely as she may have meant it, opened some eyes that needed to be opened about the different ways in which women and men experience the world and the different dangers we inherently face more often because of our gender, but it’s not a mindset that we should have taken seriously enough to hold onto halfway into the 2020s. Literally look where we are now. Everyone is terrified of everything and everyone. Yes, people are anxious like Brennan says, but men and women aren’t experiencing this anxiety in the same way.

Walt Bismarck

described the phenomenon in dating from his perspective in his back-and-forth with

Regan Arntz-Gray

(her essay, which he is responding to, is here):

[…]there exists an uncomfortably large minority of women who are highly agreeable and neurotic, see men as inherently and universally scary, and find it almost impossible to say no to a man behind closed doors. Meanwhile, the broader majority of women have vague and occasional fears in that same general direction that are frequently exacerbated by environmental factors (i.e. being on a boat).

So long as these highly agreeable and neurotic women exist, there will be a lot of miscommunication and pain for both sexes. Lots of women will feel raped when they haven’t been and the man had no such intention. Lots of men will likewise get awkward texts the next day that make them feel like a monster when they were just kind of bad at reading social cues.

You don’t have to agree with Walt’s proposed solutions in his essay to see that for women, especially younger Zoomer gals, there exists a deep (and deeply unsettling) fear of men and anything coded male or masculine, unless it’s a fellow woman or a non-binary person adopting the masculine traits, in which case it’s often celebrated as powerful or appropriately transgressive.

Back to Starling’s advice to men who want to approach a woman in a public place:

On the other hand, if she is turned towards you, making eye contact, and she responds in a friendly and talkative manner when you speak to her, you are getting a green light. You can continue the conversation until you start getting signals to back off.

The thing is, what woman does this? Just stares at a guy on the bus? I mean, I guess maybe I have, maybe we do, I’ll probably always be Tina Belcher in my heart of hearts, I don’t really know anymore, but I just can’t really get enthusiastically behind the idea that women get to stare and smile and talk when we’re interested, but men aren’t allowed to even like our shoes out loud. Of course I understand the social dynamics involved and why this would even be implied to begin with, but I agree with Regan in her essay (linked above) about women’s agency:

But in many cases, it’s not a fear of violence that leads a woman to “go along with things” but a lack of assertiveness or a fear of embarrassment. I expect that while sex differences contribute to these situations these behaviors are also influenced by social expectations. Women need to hear that they are agents, expected to be held responsible for their actions and inactions. While they might look back on a sexual experience and rightfully complain that their partner was too pushy or unethical, if they chose to have sex with him simply to avoid an awkward conversation, then that experience should be seen as a lesson for them as well.

While I also agree with Walt that you can’t just suddenly force this agency onto the kinds of younger women who’ve spent their whole lives effectively without it, there’s got to be some kind of gradual steps to get us there. Because this sort of thing, as Regan again describes, is really not okay:

During the MeToo era, the Aziz Ansari “exposé” clarified my ideological differences with many mainstream feminists. In some ways similar to the case above, the story involved a woman who by all indications could’ve left the situation at any time but didn’t. While Ansari was accused of much more explicitly coercive behavior, including re-initiating sex after she had explicitly said she felt uncomfortable and “didn’t want to feel forced” he did not sexually assault her nor is there any reason to believe she feared that he would. In my view Ansari’s behavior was clearly unethical. But I also think so-called “Grace” failed herself through her inability to act to protect her own interests. The takeaway here should not just be about how men must “be better” but about how women can be stronger. 

MeToo was an important movement. For about 5 minutes. Then it largely turned into… that. And it made all of us look like some of the most pathetic and incapable whiners on the planet, turning men we had every opportunity to walk away from into monsters because we didn’t want to hurt their feelings or experience an awkward moment.

Maybe that sounds harsh, but it is really fucking irritating to me when women remove agency from themselves — and, by extension, the rest of us.

Brennan doesn’t really make the case for why this isn’t the fault of feminism (in fact, the only part of the essay addressing feminism at all is the title), but I think that looking back through the years — especially in the direction of Starling’s essay and its 1,216 comments — I think it’s pretty clear that it had something to with it. And not feminism as a movement, necessarily, as I still find the idea of male and female equality and opportunity socially and under the law to be an obvious positive ideal to believe in and strive for, but 3rd wave internet feminism, in particular. The insidious kind that I was constantly yammering on about online between 2007 and 2012 or so, both pro and against, depending on what The Discourse was focused on at the time. The kind that Starling promoted and Brennan implicitly denies that insisted men as a group are something to fear, and that women as a group were too fragile to even look at without traumatizing them for the rest of their lives.

Starling ends her essay with an anecdote:

There’s a man with whom I went out on a single date—afternoon coffee, for one hour by the clock—on July 25th. In the two days after the date, he sent me about fifteen e-mails, scolding me for non-responsiveness. I e-mailed him back, saying, “Look, this is a disproportionate response to a single date. You are making me uncomfortable. Do not contact me again.” It is now October 7th. Does he still e-mail?

Yeah. He does. About every two weeks.

This man scores higher on the threat level scale than Man with the Cockroach Tattoos. (Who, after all, is guilty of nothing more than terrifying bad taste.) You see, Mr. E-mail has made it clear that he ignores what I say when he wants something from me. Now, I don’t know if he is an actual rapist, and I sincerely hope he’s not. But he is certainly Schrödinger’s Rapist, and this particular Schrödinger’s Rapist has a probability ratio greater than one in sixty. Because a man who ignores a woman’s NO in a non-sexual setting is more likely to ignore NO in a sexual setting, as well.

Uffda.

I can relate. But at no point did Justin’s repeated calling for the next month while I refused to take his calls make me think he was going to rape me if he ever got me alone again; it was just baffling and annoying. While it’s disrespectful and irritating for a man (or anyone) to ignore a clear “no” in any setting, it does not follow that the people who insist I try their pickled herring on rye toast would rape me if given the opportunity. Most people — most men — don’t rape people. Many grown-ass adults, however, refuse to take no for an answer in random, every day situations. One time a customer I had at the post office where I used to work decided I was cold and offered to get her gloves and extra coat out of her car for me to borrow. I politely declined her offer. She offered again. I declined, again, more firmly. She left the post office and came back with her gloves and extra coat. She handed them to me. I did not take them. I could no longer politely decline — at that point she just made me so goddamned angry that I started to act like it. I told you I don’t want your coat, lady, and this is really fucking weird.

ANYWAY.

Brennan concludes her own essay with a simple call for more kindness and understanding:

I think the dating world could use a lot more understanding and compassion. It’s natural to feel like the people (or the gender) you find desirable must be having an easy time of it, able to choose from dozens of suitors at a whim, never suffering from loneliness or insecurity. It’s hard to understand that, as afraid as you are of women you like, many women who like you are also afraid of you—not in the “what if he rapes me?” way, in the ordinary commonplace “what if he doesn’t like me? what if I say something stupid? what if I creep him out?” way. It’s hard out here for everyone. Be kind.

Yes, the dating world could use so much more understanding and compassion, and it is hard out there for everyone, and we should all be kind if we engage in it. But we’ve got to get the problem at its root, and denying that there’s any real fear among women of being raped or assaulted or attacked, or that that fear hasn’t been sowed for more than 15 years now — consciously or not — isn’t really much of a solution. We can’t just tell men to get rid of their anxiety, either, and effectively “man up” about it after we’ve spent the last 15 years telling women that any man who asks you out is probably going to rape you.

Brennan isn’t being totally unreasonable and the essay is nuanced, but I don’t think we’ll get very far with this solution. It just overlooks too much of what’s happened over the years.

Those of us who are a little older, a little wiser to the world of men and dating, would do well to help out our little Zoomer sisters to understand that all men aren’t terrifying, that in fact you’re very unlikely to be raped by some random man (as discussed earlier, rapists usually target people they already know), and that being in the physical company of men should not give a regular woman an anxiety attack, and that if it does, that there should be some steps taken to resolve her underlying issues rather than to shift the blame, or responsibility for creating the solutions, to men alone. We are human adults and we can handle this. Let’s stop scaring our girls and our boys.

I’m ready for the Tent.

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1. In true 3rd grade form, the confessing of the crush happened at recess through the BFF conduit. Kristy ran up to Troy on the playground while I waited back with another girl, informed Troy that I liked him, and asked if he like me back. He immediately broke up with his “girlfriend” of the moment, Jackie, and declared me to be his new girlfriend. I was a little 3rd grade homewrecker.

2. My husband and I met through mutual friends, but on Facebook. When we met in person, it was pretty random and neither of us considered it a date. We changed our minds about that approximately an hour into hanging out.